


Young Blood

by savanting



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Beastly King Ben, Gen, Light on Romance but Big on Heart, Multi-POV, Post-Canon, Post-Descendants (2015), Post-Descendants 2, Post-Descendants 3, multi-chapter fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savanting/pseuds/savanting
Summary: King Ben thought he had his beastly side under control; he was wrong. Now he has to look to his bride-to-be Mal and her old villain kid crew to help him keep Auradon safe.(Multi-chapter fic to be updated as fast as I can make the muse cooperate.)
Relationships: Beast/Belle (Disney), Ben/Mal (Disney: Descendants), Chad Charming/Uma, Doug/Evie (Disney: Descendants), Hades/Maleficent (Disney), Harry Hook/Audrey Rose, Jane/Carlos de Vil, Jay/Li Lonnie
Comments: 17
Kudos: 36





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Disney Descendants or any Disney characters. Expect this to be my take on what happens in the “after” following Descendants 3.
> 
> Title was inspired by lyrics in the song "King" by Lauren Aquilina

There were worse things than falling for a villain. In fact, Ben — once believed to be the pride of Auradon, the king who would prevail against any threats from the Isle of the Lost — could count so many of them upon just his fingers.

One, you could hurt someone on purpose. Out of malice. Out of hate. Out of self-interest.

Two, you could stand aside when someone else was in distress. It was just as bad to be an accomplice as it was to be the perpetrator of a crime.

And, three, you could do evil without even realizing it. You could live as a knife hiding behind the fog of your own perceptions.

Ben had learned he was the third kind. It hadn’t been an easy transition, that was for sure.

His head was hazy, the beginning of a knot forming at the base of his skull, and no matter how hard he tried he could not remember how he had gone from the ballroom — gold dust shimmering along the marble floor, a ceiling enchanted to show a midnight blue sky sprinkled with stars, a swirl of excitement from the gaggle of Auradon’s finest dressed in gowns and uniforms of all shades — to a cell that smelled of dampness and dirt. He would have recognized it as the dungeon below the castle, but there had never been a need for him to see the place, even in a tour of his home. Auradon didn’t have prisoners; there was no crime in the principality that heroes had built.

Somehow, King Ben had become the first prisoner Auradon had had in its history.

It wasn’t a kind realization. In fact, he felt like he might be sick, but something else bothered him: what filled his mouth wasn’t the taste of last night’s feast but the tang of blood.

 _Whose blood?_ he thought, growing more and more alarmed by the moment.

Before he could even register this thought process, however, there came the sound of footsteps through the hard-packed earth of the dungeon floor. Someone was coming — no, it sounded like many _someone’s_.

When the dim light illuminated the face of the first visitor, Ben staggered to his feet.

“Mal!” He rushed to the bars, clasping their cold steel in his fists. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

But the beautiful girl he loved, vibrant magenta hair pulled back from her face, looked at him with sadness in her deep green eyes. That was the first sign of trouble, so unsettling that he almost felt the urge to step back from her. “Ben,” she said softly. “How are you?”

“How am I?” The question seemed absurd, and he gave a little laugh, lacking all of his usually good-natured humor. His eyes scanned past Mal to see the blank gazes of Jay and Carlos backing up Mal. For her protection? “You shouldn’t be asking that, should you? Not to me.” He swallowed. “Who did I hurt, Mal?”

Mal opened her mouth, then closed it, and shook her head. Her eyes brimmed with what he could tell were tears she would have hated to shed. “No one died,” she said, her voice wavering for only a moment, and Ben released his hold on the bars and ran his fingers through his hair. The world felt like it was spinning beneath his feet, yet he was standing still. He was standing still, yet his world was falling apart.

He took a shuddering breath. “How many?” His voice was clipped. For once he sounded like a king who had hardened himself to harsh truths. If there had been a war with another land, he would have been able to stand as a true leader with that level of self-discipline.

But instead now he stood as a menace ridden with the weight of having harmed people in his own court. But so much better a menace than a murderer.

Mal’s eyes closed and then reopened to show an emotionless gaze her mother would probably have praised her for having. “Three courtiers. None seriously injured. But—“ And here the Mal he knew, the girl who was no longer all Isle but instead a soon-to-be queen of a kingdom trying to balance gentry of both good and evil, returned. She sighed as if she were twice her age. “But the people are afraid, Ben. They can’t trust a king who — who—“

“Who can become a beast without even knowing it’s happening,” he finished, his voice solemn but steadfast. How long had he thought he could hide it from his court? From his people? And what if he had hurt Mal or one of the other people she loved?

Mal nodded, lips pursed. “The council is calling for your removal as king. They want to strip you of your crown.”

And then, rising like a tide he couldn’t control, came a burst of rage. “What?!”

Mal’s words were reasonable, and he should have expected them, but something inside him — _ignited_ at the thought of someone else wearing his crown.

Jay stepped forward, out of the shadows, but Mal held up a hand to keep him back from the cell. But to keep him from Ben, or Ben from him? “Ben,” she said, voice strong and commanding. “Ben, you need to breathe and _think this through_.”

Her tone snapped something into perspective for him. The rage began to cool to a slow simmer instead of the inferno it had been so close to becoming. “What do I need to do, Mal?” His voice held all the desperation he felt. “What can I do to remain king of Auradon?”

Mal looked him straight in the eyes, her green to his muddled hue, and she said, “You need to tame the beast. That’s all there is to it.”

Ben began to shake his head. “How can I? How can I fight this — this _thing_ inside me?”

“You have to learn,” she said earnestly, “or find a way to break whatever curse is in your blood. That’s the only way, Ben.”

He felt like ripping himself apart from the inside out. But no, he would _not_ give in. Not with his kingdom at stake.

“How long do I have?” He clenched and unclenched his hands, trying to find any way to calm himself.

“The council’s giving you a probationary period of a month,” Mal said. “We have to find a way before then. Otherwise, your crown is forfeit.”

One word caused him to snap back to keener attention before all hope sputtered out of him. “Wait. _We_?”

And then, right then, Mal’s magnificent smile blazed anew. With it, Ben felt the stirrings of hope return with a vengeance. “You won’t do this alone,” she said. “Even if we have to travel _beyond_ Auradon to find a way to get rid of your beast.”

Ben felt a rush of gratitude, but his smile slipped away before it could cement upon his face. “This is my burden—“

Jay snorted from behind Mal. “Oh, please, Ben, Mal is going to be your queen. You’re practically family already.”

To his side, Carlos nodded, and Mal raised an eyebrow at Ben while wearing a sly grin.

In a less pressing moment, Ben would have felt more than a little touched.

“Okay,” he said, taking a stuttering breath. “Okay then. How much longer do I have to stay here?”

Mal and Jay exchanged a glance that Ben supposed they thought he might not have noticed — but he did. “What’s wrong?” He looked between the two ex-villains and tried to gauge their expressions.

“We have to try and convince Evie to come,” Mal said in a rush.

“Need the whole team, after all,” Carlos piped in.

“Okay,” Ben said slowly, “so why is that a problem?”

And there it was again: Mal’s shuttered gaze. Always a tell-tale sign.

“Mal,” he said, “what aren’t you telling me?”

Quiet, so quiet you could hear a beating heart.

“Doug was one of the people you attacked,” Mal said at last. The villain kids behind her kept quiet and avoided Ben’s gaze.

Ben swallowed once, twice, all the while his fingers kept curling and uncurling.

“I have to make this right,” he whispered. Then he looked right at Mal, right at Jay and Carlos, some of the people he trusted the most. “Will you help me? To right these wrongs?”

There was a long moment where Ben thought they might walk away, laughing at him all the way, but he shouldn’t have worried: Mal met his gaze steadily.

“Let’s break the curse.”


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even as Evie worries after her boyfriend's well-being, Mal is more concerned with finding a way so that Ben never becomes a beast and a danger to Auradon ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own any Disney properties.
> 
> I apologize for the lateness of this chapter! The muse is fickle, and I have no one to blame but myself. Enjoy!

Evie felt like she was living in a glass bowl with all eyes peering at her as she tried to remain calm and composed for all appearances.

Inside, however, she was _raging_. Even as she sat and watched Doug’s measured breaths, she kept bringing her hands to his just to make sure that there was warmth still in his limbs. He was pale from losing so much blood so quickly – the culprit of three deep gashes on his right arm. The wounds were stitched and bandaged in plenty of gauze, but there was still the threat of potential nerve damage in the arm. The medics had told her that they would have to see as his treatment progressed. For now, they just had to wait for him to wake up. It had been less than a day since the celebration – a lead-up to the wedding that was still weeks away – but she could no longer think of how happy she was that Mal and her true love were finally marrying.

She had approved wholeheartedly until the king himself had gone into beast mode, rampaging through the ballroom, with no sense or reason to his movements. When he had been close enough that Evie had felt his hot breath near her throat, Doug had stepped in and taken all the damage of the king’s claws.

Her good, gallant Doug. If this had been another era, he would have been the knight who sacrificed himself to save a fair maiden from a fire-breathing dragon. But Evie had enough of sacrifices: she knew them too well from the Isle. In a place like Auradon, so safe that crime was practically nonexistent, she had never imagined a boy would risk his life to protect her from some threat. That was Isle living, not the way of the golden kingdom of Auradon.

It seemed that she was still due for many disappointments, even with the misery of the Isle being in her past.

The worst of it was that she _liked_ Ben, both as a king and as her best friend’s fiancé. He had been the kind of boy who smiled so often that unhappiness seemed like a rarity for him. And the way Mal looked at him – Evie knew he was worthy of such regard.

Why, then, had neither of them said a thing about the latent beast in his body? Even without consulting a spell book, Evie recognized powerful, binding magic when she saw it. Whatever the trigger for it, Ben was a danger to Auradon now. And Doug – he had paid the price for this deception.

Evie was angry with Ben, of course, but even more so with Mal – who should have warned them all. Her loyalties weren’t supposed to be tangled up in a web. Mal had promised her that she wouldn’t hide any more secrets, but it seemed that was no longer the case.

Before Evie could unravel all the threads of what she was feeling, she heard footsteps enter the room. At first she thought it would be a nurse checking Doug’s vitals – but one look told her this was a meeting she had hoped to postpone.

“I thought you would still be trying to placate that king of yours,” she said softly to Mal, who stood at the other end of the room. “Let me guess: he’s just misunderstood and a little bad, no harm, no foul.”

For her part, Mal looked subdued. Even her normally vibrant eyes seemed like they were only a ghost of their usual brightness. “Evie, you know Ben wouldn’t have done this unless there was magic involved,” she said. “He feels terrible, and—”

“I don’t care how he feels,” Evie snapped, and Mal looked surprised by the sharpness in her best friend’s voice. She could feel the rush of tears threatening to reveal themselves: her make-up was already a mess since she hadn’t even bothered to wash her face once since Doug had been admitted to the hospital for his injuries. “No matter how sorry he is, he can’t erase what he did. He’s just lucky that no one was killed.” _And if Doug had died, then I would have made sure the king felt my wrath._

Mal must have sensed the turn of Evie’s thoughts since she said in a soft voice, “I know you’re angry and upset, Evie, but Ben didn’t mean to do this. He wasn’t himself.”

Evie laughed with a hint of spite. “I don’t care,” she said. “He can’t be trusted around people with that – that _thing_ inside him ready to lash out at any moment’s notice.”

Her best friend sighed. “Will you please just come with me so we can explain to you what we know? And then you can talk to Ben and see his side—”

“I have nothing to say to him,” Evie said, her eyes straight on Mal with a look of almost-pure malice. “Do you know how I always worried _we_ , as the villain kids, would be the one to endanger everyone in this kingdom? But no. The one who’s a danger to everyone is Ben.”

Mal just shook her head. “Evie, please, don’t be like this—”

“My boyfriend nearly died,” Evie said, “and I’m not going to have a nice little chat to try and understand the man who almost murdered him.”

When it seemed like Mal was still intent on arguing, Evie just held up a hand. “Go. Please. Please just go, Mal.”

Without another word, Mal stepped out of the room just as easily as she had entered it. Only once she was sure she was alone did Evie burst into sobs that wracked her entire body, her hand clutching Doug’s as if she could will him to be back to normal with just a few good thoughts.

But no. This wasn’t a fairy tale with a happy ending. This was one of those tales that seemed to promise tragedy instead for all involved.

*

Mal paced in the throne room of Ben's castle, chewing on one perfect nail as she thought of how easily everything could fall apart in an instant. She had never seen Evie so distraught – and then, on the other hand, she had never seen Ben so miserable either. It was a conundrum. How could she help one without hurting the other?

“You’re going to wear a hole in that carpet,” Carlos said, standing in the doorway and watching her. She looked up and offered a brief smile.

“We’ll just say it’s rustic,” she said, trying to inject a little humor in her day. But neither she nor Carlos seemed amused by the attempt.

“How’s Evie?” he asked. He had always been the one most concerned with everyone’s emotional well-being. Mal supposed the empathy came from all the times he had been hurt himself throughout his life. Carlos had always been more sensitive and perceptive than the average boy.

Mal shook her head. “Still doesn’t want to talk about anything with me,” she said. “And she refuses to see Ben.”

“Do you blame her?” Carlos asked. “I mean, Mal – you knew something was wrong. You said you felt something was off with him ever since Audrey used the scepter on him to turn him into a beast. Lingering magic, right?”

She hesitated. She was no sorceress, at least not like her mother had been, so she couldn’t exactly pinpoint what had caused Ben’s sudden transformation. “I don’t know if it’s as simple as that,” she admitted, and Carlos frowned at her.

“So what’s our plan of action?” he asked after a moment. “Should we try to get that spell book out of the museum? Might be hard to manage a heist without enough look-outs, though…”

Mal stayed silent before she murmured, “I guess it’s come to this, huh.”

Carlos just stared at her. “Okay, I don’t like the sound of that. You look like you have a plan but you don’t know if it’s a good one or a bad one.”

“It’s a bad one,” she said. “Not that we have many options right now. But Ben needs help as soon as possible. We can’t let magic, curse or not, run its course throughout his body.” _And who knows who else he could hurt if we let him out,_ she thought but did not voice aloud to Carlos.

Carlos leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Okay, hit me. Don’t forget we had plenty of bad plans on the Isle, but we survived all of them. Barely.”

Carlos – ever the optimist. Mal had to smile at that. “I think we need to talk to someone who knows all about curses.”

“Okay,” Carlos said slowly, not immediately comprehending what she would obviously say next. “Tell me more. I’m ready for it.”

A sigh trembled out of Mal’s lips. “My mother,” she said. “We need to find a way to speak to my mother.”

Whatever Carlos had been expecting, he couldn’t hide his shock – and apprehension. “Mal, I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

“It’s all I have right now!” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “If we take the spell book and the wand, then I think we can keep her bound up while we try to interrogate her. It’s a long-shot, but she knows her way around curses. And it was her scepter that changed Ben into a beast in the first place.”

Carlos watched her with an unreadable gaze before he said, “If that’s your decision, I’ll help you in any way I can. Villain kids unite, right?”

Mal smiled. “Now I just have to get it past Jay,” she said.

Carlos tapped his foot against the ground. “So you’re giving up on Evie?” he asked, his voice softening with every word.

Mal looked down at her jagged fingernails, all bitten from the anxiety that had built up over the past twenty-four hours. “I’ll never give up on her,” she said, “but I know when to leave her alone. She needs space to . . . process things. I think her biggest concern is Doug right now.”

“I can understand that logic,” Carlos said, “but don’t you think we should wait for her before we enact Project Mistress of Evil?”

“We don’t have the time,” Mal said. “I need to find some answers about Ben’s curse before we can do anything else.”

Carlos was quiet, only to say, “All right then. What’s our first step, Mal?”

She closed her eyes and felt the pulse of a headache beginning behind her forehead. She hadn’t slept in what felt like years. “Let’s find a way to transform my mother back into her old body. We can hardly question a lizard, after all.”

Mal just hoped this plan of hers wouldn’t endanger Auradon further in the process.


End file.
